On Sept. 28, 2012, the PP Blog reported on bizarre court filings linked to “sovereign citizens,” “Freemen-on-the-Land” and others in Canada. The story may provide some additional context for a story published yesterday by the Global Post with a Vancouver dateline.
From the Global Post: “Police officers, Crown lawyers and judges have been sued or been named in multimillion-dollar ‘liens’ or ‘ecclesiastical notices’ or other legal manoeuvres.”
Notaries public reportedly have encountered menacing behavior from “sovereigns” or “freemen.” Police have experienced the same during traffic stops.
And there is concern about encounters involving firearms, according to a bulletin quoted by the Global Post.
Screen shot from Newseum. Red highlight by PP Blog.
UPDATED 2:31 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A story on bogus liens filed against a Minnesota sheriff and others received prominent treatment in the New York Times today, appearing on Page A1 (the cover page) — and above the fold in the New York edition.
The story touches on the cases of Thomas and Lisa Eilertson, both of whom are jailed in Minnesota in part because they filed bogus liens totaling at least $25 million against Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek. Over time, the Times reports, the Eilertsons filed “more than $250 billion in liens, demands for compensatory damages and other claims against more than a dozen people, including the sheriff, county attorneys, the Hennepin County registrar of titles and other court officials.”
The Eilertsons paid attention to a “sovereign citizen guru” who pitched a lien-filing strategy described as “death by a thousand paper cuts,” the Times reports.
Three residents of Placerville, Calif. — Teresa Marie Marty, Charles Tingler and Victoria Tingler — have been charged in a superseding indictment with filing false liens against government officials performing their duties.
In what may be an emerging form of menacing aimed at government officials, one government worker was targeted with a fabricated $500,000 lien and two other bogus liens — and “Harris and Marty engaged a commercial collection agency” to collect on one of the fabricated debts, prosecutors said.
“Harris” refers to Pamela Harris, also of Placerville. She was described by prosecutors as an “office manager” at Advanced Financial Services (AFS), Marty’s company.
Marty has been charged with “filing liens against the property of three Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees,” prosecutors said.
She also “filed liens of at least $84 million against the property of two Justice Department attorneys involved in a lawsuit filed against her in 2009 to enjoin her” and AFS from preparing tax returns, prosecutors said.
From a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice (italics added):
According to the superseding indictment, the Tinglers were clients of Marty and AFS, who filed a false tax return in 2008 fraudulently claiming a refund of $358,415. The indictment charges the Tinglers, as well as Marty, with filing this tax return. When the IRS tried to collect the fraudulently obtained refund, both Mr. and Mrs. Tingler filed multiple liens against the IRS revenue officer who was handling their collection case.
According to the charging documents the liens disclosed the social security numbers of the respective government employees. Marty and the Tinglers are also charged with multiple counts of unlawfully using the social security numbers of the government employees in the liens they filed with the California Secretary of State.
Finally, the indictment charges Marty, Mr. Tingler and AFS office manager Pamela Harris, of Placerville with participating in a conspiracy to defraud the IRS. The indictment alleges that as part of the conspiracy, Harris and Marty engaged a commercial collection agency to collect one of the three false liens that Mr. Tingler had filed, one of which was in the amount of $500,000.
Marty, Harris, and Marty’s daughter, Rebecca Bandera-Marty, had previously been indicted in June 2013 for a large-scale tax-fraud scheme. Those charges are included in this superseding indictment. According to the superseding indictment, in 2008 and 2009 Marty, Bandera-Marty, and Harris conspired to file at least 250 false individual federal income tax returns on behalf of individuals who resided in twenty-six states, and which claimed more than $60 million in false federal income tax refunds.
Cases involving the alleged filing of false liens against government employees have surfaced across the United States. The tactic, which has been described as “paper terrorism,” may involve the filing of purported UCC Financing Statements and has been associated with tax fraudsters and members of the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement.
Records show that, in 2011, a federal magistrate judge in California ordered that eight “UCC Financing Statements” filed by Marty “be declared null, void, and of no legal effect.” At least three of the statements targeted IRS workers. A fourth targeted a former U.S. Attorney who became a judge in California. A fifth targeted a Justice Department attorney.
Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a purported “sovereign citizen” and a figure in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi-scheme story, was convicted in March of filing bogus liens against public officials involved in the ASD prosecution.
It has happened again — this time in Raleigh, N.C., officials said.
Sullivan Colin, 36, has been arrested on a charge of filing a false lien for $3 million against a court clerk who oversaw a foreclosure case, the Raleigh News Observer is reporting.
From the News Observer (italics added):
Court officials say the lien and a second one that . . . Sullivan Colin, 36, was trying to file Friday when he was arrested, are part of harassment of court officials by adherents of a “sovereign citizen” movement that denies government authority.
Colin was taken into custody at the Wake County Register of Deeds office Friday afternoon when he went there to file another lien, officials said, and was arrested Friday evening.
Purported “sovereign citizens” have been implicated in bizarre plots in various U.S. states to file false liens against the property of public officials. The practice has been described as “paper terrorism.”
AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was convicted in March of multiple crimes, including filing bogus liens against federal officials involved in the prosecution of the $119 million ASD Ponzi scheme. In May, he was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.
Former Leaming business associate David Carroll Stephenson also was convicted of filing false liens. He was sentenced to 10 years. Stephenson already was in jail for a tax scam.
In March, two California scammers (Ronald Wesley Groves and Donald Charles Mann) who’d swindled investors in an “international bank trades” caper were sentenced to additional time for targeting a federal prosecutors and FBI agents with false liens.
Earlier — in January 2013 — Robert Clifton Tanner, a purported Louisiana “sovereign citizen” implicated in a cross-border plot to file bogus financial judgments against state-court judges and others in Utah, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
In November 2012, Cherron Marie Phillips, a purported Illinois “sovereign citizen,” was charged with filing false liens that sought $100 billion each from former Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and 11 other public officials, including a chief U.S. District Judge, a U.S. District Judge, two U.S. Magistrate Judges, an assistant U.S. Attorney, a federal court clerk, four federal Task Force officers and a federal agent.
Harvey Douglas Goff, a purported Utah “sovereign citizen” who allegedly claimed he enjoyed “diplomatic immunity,” was charged in May 2011 with placing bogus liens seeking spectacular sums from public officials. He was sentenced in April 2013 to 36 months in federal prison.
In 2011, California Ponzi schemer Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao pleaded gulity to federal charges in Nevada that he filed false liens against public officials. Meanwhile, Mark D. Leitner was indicted in Florida during the same year on charges of filing false liens for $48.489 billion against a number of federal employees.
Flash forward to 2013, and Donald Joe Barber, a purported Alabama “sovereign citizen,” was convicted of fraud for trying to pay off a mortgage with a bogus “bonded promissory note.” Purported “sovereigns” have been linked to multiple forms of fraud
Also see December 2010 story about a false-liens case against Andrew Isaac Chance in Maryland. Meanwhile, see a June 2010 story about a false-liens case against Ronald James Davenport in Washington state.
Harvey Douglas Goff, the Utah man who engaged in a bizarre hectoring campaign against public officials at the local, state and federal levels, has been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison and ordered to stay away from “sovereign citizen” groups for three years after his release.
Goff is expected to begin his prison sentence by May 30, after being permitted to self-surrender. He pleaded guilty in December to obstruction of justice.
U.S. District Judge David Nuffer sentenced Goff Monday, ordering three years’ supervised release in addition to the prison term.
Among other things, Goff was accused of filing a false lien that sought $53 trillion. He also was accused of asserting that a “judge had provided him with tens of millions of dollars in cash in ‘suspicious’ transactions,” federal prosecutors said.
“Sovereign citizens” have been known to try to intimidate public officials or turn the tables on them by submitting fraudulent reports to the IRS.
As part of a plea agreement, Goff “admitted that between April and July of 2010 he endeavored to obstruct and influence the administration of justice in U.S. Tax Court,” federal prosecutors said. “He admitted that he repeatedly filed false and fictitious forms in a national database.”
Some of Goff’s legal woes began after a traffic stop by police in Ogden. Goff retaliated by filing false liens for extraordinary sums, prosecutors said.
At one point, prosecutors said, Goff claimed “diplomatic immunity.”
Ronald Wesley Groves and Donald Charles Mann swindled $4.8 million from 642 investors in a bizarre “international bank trades” caper that promised a payout of 4,000 percent. Now, they’ve been sentenced to an extra year in federal prison for filing false liens against a federal prosecutor and two FBI agents involved in the fraud probe, the office of U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner of the Eastern District of California said.
Prime-bank fraud schemes, which may trade on secrecy and claim to be humanitarian in nature, are among the strangest of all in Ponzi Land. In the Groves/Mann scheme, $300,000 made its way into “the coffers of a Liberian presidential candidate,” prosecutors said.
Liberia is a country in West Africa.
Groves, 71, was sentenced last week to 10 years in federal prison for his role in the “Money Growth Solutions” (MGS) swindle, which operated between April 2005 and April 2006.
Mann, 56, was sentenced to more than 17 years for the same swindle.
Both men were sentenced today to an extra year in jail for filing the bogus liens while they were awaiting trial on fraud charges from the MGS scheme in 2008. The liens claimed that Groves and Mann were owed $101.9 million and that the meter was running against the prosecutor and FBI agents at a rate of $100,000 a day.
Groves and Mann were charged with four counts of retaliation against federal officials by false claim and slander of title and one count of obstruction of justice.
From a statement by prosecutors:
The defendants told investors that these bank trades were a highly secretive investment vehicle known only to a few people around the world.
In June 2011, a jury returned guilty verdicts against Groves and Mann after a nine-day trial. According to evidence presented at their trial, in one program, investors were offered a 10 to 1 return (1,000 percent) on their investment within a matter of weeks. In a later offering, the defendants promised a 40 to 1 return (4,000 percent) in the same amount of time. The defendants told investors that while their money was waiting to be placed into a bank trade, it would be maintained in an escrow account that could not be touched for any other purpose. The defendants also told investors that if they were unable to execute a “bank trade,” the investors would receive their entire investment back plus 6 percent interest within 12 months. With the exception of a few people who were able to obtain refunds, every MGS investor lost their entire investment.
The federal investigation revealed that by April 2006, out of the $4.8 million received, Money Growth Solutions had less than $65,000 remaining in its bank account. Some of that money — $300,000 apiece — went into the pockets of the two defendants. The remainder of the money went to the defendants’ various pet projects, including $300,000 to the coffers of a Liberian presidential candidate and $2.5 million to a Florida company that was supposedly developing a revolutionary battery. The battery company was later determined by the Securities and Exchange Commission to be a scam and its owner was federally indicted.
Robert Clifton Tanner, the purported Louisiana “sovereign citizen” implicated in a cross-border plot to file bogus financial judgments against state-court judges and others in Utah, has pleaded guilty to federal charges of mail fraud and has been sentenced to 30 months in prison.
One of the documents was styled “Petition for Agreement and Harmony in the Nature of a Notice of International Commercial Claim Administrative Remedy,” federal prosecutors in Utah said.
Tanner is 45. His co-defendant, Maria Melody Fuentes Cecil Mobo, 42, of Spanish Fork, Utah, is scheduled to go on trial Feb. 25. She is charged with four counts of mail fraud.
Bogus filings by the pair asserted they were owed billions of dollars by judges and others, prosecutors said.
As part of a plea agreement with the 30-month sentence for Tanner, “other state and federal jurisdictions in Louisiana and Utah had agreed to forgo additional charges against” him.
The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge David Sam.
If you file a false lien against public officials and police in New York, you’d be committing a felony under a proposed new law sponsored by three Republican state Senators.
The Senators have proposed that violators of the new law be punished by a fine of up to $10,000 per instance or serve up to a year in jail — or both.
Although a federal law is in place to protect federal officials, New York has no corresponding state law to protect state and local officials and police officers from what has been described as “paper terrorism” carried out by purported “sovereign citizens.”
The principal sponsor of the state bill is Sen. George D. Maziarz. Cosponsors include Sens. John A. DeFrancisco and Michael H. Ranzenhofer.
In recent years, members of the so called “Sovereign Citizens Movement” have begun to utilize the tactic of filing multiple false or fictitious liens against police officers and public officials as a means to intimidate these individuals and undermine the rule of law. The FBI describes such individuals as anti-government extremists who believe that even though they are in the country they are separate or “sovereign” from the United States. There are multiple examples across New York State of “sovereigns” using false liens as a part of a scheme to destroy the lives of ordinary people who are simply doing their jobs. These bogus liens are meritless, but in multiple cases they were accepted by the Department of State and other entities and began to appear on credit reports and had a significant and negative impact on law abiding citizens.
There have been uber bizarre cases involving “sovereign citizens” in New York, including one in which an individual who once reportedly stole a tractor trailer full of “canned beans” was convicted of running a tax scam from jail after being influenced by a purported “sovereign citizen” website article attributed in part to “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Part of the first page of the indictment against purported “sovereign citizen” Cherron Marie Phillips. Source: Screen shot of document published by the Chicago Tribune.
During his days at the Justice Department, Patrick J. Fitzgerald perhaps was America’s most famous prosecutor. When he wasn’t prosecuting terrorism cases in New York (United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al.), he was prosecuting Mafia figures (United States v. John Gambino).
Fitzgerald, now 51 and in private practice, has drawn praise and criticism for his actions against politicians and public officials from both sides of the aisle. From Chicago, he was involved in the successful prosecution of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, in an alleged conspiracy to sell the U.S. Senate seat of Barack Obama, who’d been elected President of the United States in 2008.
And Fitzgerald also presided over the successful prosecution of Scooter Libby, a fixture in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. It was an exceptionally famous “CIA leaks” case, the underpinnings of which were known as “The Plame Affair,” a sort of Watergate of the early 2000s.
Given Fitzgerald’s participation in high-profile cases against international rogues and terrorists, organized-crime figures and U.S. domestic political elites on both sides of the aisle, it’s easy to forget he also prosecuted or supervised the prosecution of ordinary cases. One such case involved a defendant by the name of Devon Phillips, who pleaded guilty to drug charges four years ago, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Cherron Marie Phillips, Phillips’ sister and a purported “sovereign citizen,” now has been charged with filing false liens that seek $100 billion each from Fitzgerald and 11 other public officials, including a chief U.S. District Judge, a U.S. District Judge, two U.S. Magistrate Judges, an assistant U.S. Attorney, a federal court clerk, four federal Task Force officers and a federal agent.
Fitzgerald and the other federal officials are not identified in the Cherron Phillips indictment, but the indictment charges a bogus lien for $100 billion was filed by Phillips in Chicago against a “United States Attorney” on March 14, 2011. The famed prosecutor was Chicago’s U.S. Attorney (the Northern District of Illinois) on that date.
If Phillips were to get her way, every man, woman and child in the United States would owe her brother $3,821.65, a figure arrived at by dividing $1.2 trillion — the sought-after sum — by 314 million, the approximate U.S. population.
The liens were filed in the “public record of the Cook County Recorder of Deeds,” according to the indictment.
Based on the content of the indictment and other records, it appears as though the office of U.S. Attorney Stephen R. Wigginton of the Southern District of Illinois is prosecuting the case against Phillips to remove any questions about whether she could be treated fairly by prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois. Fitzgerald once led the Northern District and, as noted above, he and an assistant U.S. Attorney from that office allegedly were targeted in the liens caper.
The indictment did not say whether taxpayers will incur additional expenses because of the need for a prosecutor in a different district to handle the case. There have been instances in other states in which both federal judges and federal prosecutors have recused themselves because of actions brought by purported “sovereigns.” Judges from other districts and even other states effectively have been flown in to preside over such matters, invariably because the officials targeted in liens capers become potential witnesses.
BULLETIN: The November 2011 arrest by the FBI of Kenneth Wayne Leaming was part of a deeper probe into the activities of a “national” group of “sovereign citizens” operating in the Pacific Northwest, new court filings by federal prosecutors in the Western District of Washington reveal.
“Local jurisdictions alerted federal law enforcement that they had received a significant number of threats from members of this group,” prosecutors said.
Leaming, prosecutors said, was “a long-time constitutionalist/sovereign citizen, who had a
documented history of holding himself out as a law enforcement officer and/or a lawyer . . . He also was instrumental in founding the ‘County Rangers,’ the sovereign group’s armed enforcement wing. Members of the County Rangers were issued realistic-looking badges and credentials were required to possess firearms as part of their duties, and held themselves out as law enforcement agents.”
Leaming, 56, of Spanaway, Wash., is a figure in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme story. Some ASD members have claimed Leaming was performing legal work for them, and his name appears on the ASD court docket as the filer of a purported “Notice of Final Determination and Judgment.”
Such filings have been associated with the “sovereign citizens” movement.
As first reported on the PP Blog last year, Leaming, 56 and a convicted felon for piloting an aircraft without a license, was found with two federal fugitives from Arkansas at the time of his arrest.
Both of those fugitives — Timothy Shawn Donavan and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen — now have been convicted of multiple counts of mail fraud in a home-based business caper in Arkansas, according to court files.
The new filings by prosecutors came in response to a bid by Leaming to challenge the search warrant in the case and to suppress evidence against him.
Leaming was indicted on charges of filing false liens, harboring fugitives, possessing firearms as a convicted felon and uttering a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” with a face value of $1 million and depositing it in U.S. Bank.
The bank “briefly credited Leaming’s account in the amount of $31,350, before realizing the amount was wholly fictitious and reversing the credit,” prosecutors said.
At least four of Leaming’s “sovereign” associates — David Russell Myrland, Timothy Garrison, Raymond Leo Jarlik-Bell and David Carroll Stephenson — already have been charged or convicted in various schemes, prosecutors said.
Bogus liens linked to Leaming were found during a search of Jarlik-Bell’s residence, prosecutors said, making a veiled reference to the ASD case as a “a large wire fraud case” in the District of Columbia.
Whether Jarlik-Bell has any ASD ties is unclear.
The liens had been filed with the Pierce County Auditor [in Washington state] against a “federal District Judge, an AUSA, and other federal agents and employees, ” prosecutors said.
Other records show that each of the alleged lien targets had ties to the ASD case, including U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia. Collyer presided over the ASD case.
Prosecutors now assert that agents conducted a search of Leaming’s Spanaway residence and found an “AK-47 style assault rifle with a bayonet; several handguns (one of which was in a drawer of the desk Leaming was sitting at as entry was made); two other rifles; and a shotgun.”
From the prosecution filing (italics added):
“Immediately after execution of the search warrant, but before Leaming was transported from the scene, agents asked Leaming questions about the presence of firearms for officer safety purposes. Leaming admitted that a number of firearms were present in the home.”
Meanwhile, agents found a “box of ‘County Ranger’ badges and other false law enforcement credentials,” prosecutors said.
At the same time, agents found “numerous boxes of correspondence and legal paperwork documenting other apparent fraud schemes,” prosecutors said.
Leaming is contending that the alleged liens aren’t really liens and, even if they were, “he had some constitutional right to file them,” prosecutors said.
He also contends that he has a Constitutional right to possess firearms as a convicted felon and that the government is not permitted to regulate firearms ownership, prosecutors said.
As the investigation continued more bogus liens were discovered against other government officials, prosecutors said.
Those liens have been linked to Leaming and Stephenson, a jailed former business colleague of Leaming’s. They were filed in Pierce County “against the Warden” of the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix and the “direct[or] of the Bureau of Prisons,” prosecutors said.
From the prosecution’s filing (italics added):
” . . . during the investigation agents also discovered that Leaming was preparing and using false and fictitious financial instruments. These instruments were typically called “Bonded Promissory Notes,” and purported to be issued by the Federal Reserve or the United States Treasury.”
As to the firearms allegations, Leaming “advanced some type of nonsensical, quasi-legalistic explanation as to why they were not, in fact, firearms,” prosecutors said.
Leaming has been jailed since his November 2011 arrest. Since that time, he has sued President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and a county sheriff in Arkansas, according to court filings.
ASD operator Andy Bowdoin was sentenced in August to 78 months in federal prison. He admitted in May that ASD was a Ponzi scheme. Prosecutors said the scheme gathered at least $119 million.
Steve A. Baker. (Source: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.)
Steve A. Baker’s booking sheet at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office after his arrest Sunday by Phoenix police during a traffic stop provided a hint that officers had a strange encounter with the 36-year-old man.
Here is how the sheet reads (italics/bolding added):
MARIJ-TRANSPORT AND/OR SELL BRIBERY-TO INFLUENCE ACTION MARIJUANA-POSSESS FOR SALE RESISTING ARREST MARIJUANA-POSSESS/USE DRUG PARAPHERNALIA-POSSESS/USE
Marijuana charges are not all that unusual. Neither is a charge of resisting arrest. But a bribery charge?
Phoenix New Times did some digging and discovered that Baker allegedly tried to barter with the officer.
Citing court documents, here is how New Times put it on its Blog:
“. . . if the cop just let him go, Baker said he wouldn’t have to place a lien against the officer’s own home.”
Yes, purported “sovereigns” now allegedly are seeking to put a chill on cops by announcing up front that they can avoid an unpleasant fate — the filing of a lien against their personal property — if they simply hop back in their patrol cars, ignore their sworn duties and let crime go unchecked.
For additional background on another purported Arizona “sovereign — Michael Lee Crane — see this Feb. 15, 2012, PP Blog story. The Blog reported on that date that Crane advised a judge that he “reserved” his “right” to the “Uniform Commercial Code” after he was charged in the brutal murders of Lawrence Shapiro, 79, and Glenna Shapiro, 78, and waiting to be charged in the brutal murder of Bruce Gaudet.
On Sept. 28, 2012, the PP Blog reported on bizarre court filings linked to “sovereign citizens,” “Freemen-on-the-Land” and others in Canada. The story may provide some additional context for a story published yesterday by the Global Post with a Vancouver dateline.
